CHAPTER XIX
THE ROYAL MERCY
The condemned youths heard the next cell entered, and their comrade Carter roused from his bed. A key then grated in their own door, it was flung open, and there were Mr. Cope, the Governor, and a bevy of turnkeys in the passage.
“Out with it!” gasped Creasey, on his knees. “I’m respited, ain’t I? I never done it, sir. I never did! The King wouldn’t hang an innocent man?”
“Get up and dress yourself,” was the reply. “You will hear the Report upstairs, all of you together. You, too, Erichsen! Slip on your things.”
Tom obeyed, and then lent a hand to Creasey, who hardly knew his small-clothes from his jacket, and clung to Tom as a child to its nurse.
“I’m innocent,” he kept mumbling. “They’ll be the murderers if they let me swing. Didn’t I tell you I was innocent, Erichsen? Haven’t I said so all along? Oh, my Gawd, if they let me swing!”
“They won’t,” whispered Tom; “but if they did, why, we’ve got to die some time; it’s an easy death, and there’s an end of it.”
“But I don’t want to die!—I dursn’t die! I don’t deserve to die—don’t I keep telling yer I never done it?” And the abject thing clung blubbering to Tom’s arm, as the turnkey who was waiting at the door conducted the pair upstairs.
The upper day-room, or Cell Ward, as it was indifferently termed, was but poorly lighted with candles, whose sepulchral rays added a pallor even to the white faces of those dragged from their beds to hear their doom. The number of the latter being now complete, all fourteen were ordered to kneel, and Tom found himself between Creasey and Carter, at one end of the line. Creasey still clung to his arm. Carter knelt like a rock, with his great fingers clutched in front of him, and heavy drops falling on them from his bended brow. This was all Tom saw before the Ordinary entered in his gown and halted before him first.
“Mr. Erichsen,” said he, with a compassionate tremor, “the Recorder has this evening made his report to the King. I am very sorry to have to inform you that it is unfavourable.”
Tom inclined his head. He had cherished no hopes.
The Ordinary approached Carter.
“I am sorry to tell you it is all against you also,” he continued. “As for you, Creasey,” and the latter tightened his grip on Tom’s arm, “I am happy to inform you that your life is spared; and I am very happy to inform all the others that by the Royal mercy their lives are spared.”
Creasey withdrew his hand from Tom’s arm, and edged further away on his knees. A deep sigh rose from a dozen breasts; then, as the chaplain was about to offer up a prayer, there came a sudden crash at Tom’s side, and the wretched Carter was floundering on the floor in convulsions. The rest were hurried back to their cells, and Creasey executed a breakdown while Tom quietly undressed.
“But that’s all right!” cried the former, stopping suddenly. “It’s no more’n I expected, ‘cause, you see, I’m an innocent man, an’ alius was; that’s why you never caught me showing the white, Erichsen, though once or twice you thought you did. Jiggered if you wouldn’t believe any think, a mug like you! Why, I used to bilk you every blooming night for fun! Not but what I’m sorry it’s all up with you, old man; though it’s a nice an’ comfy death, you told me so yourself, and you know we’ve all got to die some day! Besides, you done yours—no denying it—but I never done mine at all; so it’s fair an’ square enough, you must admit!”
The little cur was snoring in ten minutes. He was removed to the Transport side next morning. And Tom, left in solitude, would have given some days of the twelve remaining to have had him back.
The execution was fixed for the thirtieth. He would never see another June.
Bassett came from day to day with news of the petition; it was being signed, but not as freely as at first. Bassett’s disappointment was patent to the condemned man. The smart young fellow was in fact beginning to weary of his up-hill work, and to think about the bill.
So next day Tom asked Bassett whether the Noble Unknown had also abandoned hope and effort.
“Not he,” said Bassett in a half-disgusted tone. “He is moving heaven and earth; seeking private interviews with the Home Secretary, if not with the King himself. He’s quite capable of it. A wonderful man when he gets an idea into his head!”
“But what put this idea into his head?”
“Heaven knows!”
Tom looked the attorney through and through, and asked another question. “Did you tell him how much I should like to see him before I die—to thank him?”
“I did; but he is too busy working for you; he said that would do you more good.”
“I see,” said Tom, sadly; “another Culliford! Then why is he doing it? Culliford was paid; he paid him; but why, again? See here, you Bassett; both you and he disbelieve in me—I know it now—but you are tired of your job, and he is not. Why not? I believe you know! Then tell me, and let us part friends once and for all; you need bother your head no more about me, only tell me what you must know.”
“I know nothing.”
“Then what you suspect.”
Bassett considered; had his private conviction (that there was a woman in it) on the tip of his tongue; but ultimately shook his shrewd, cool head. There was nothing to be gained by speaking out; a dying man’s gratitude was nothing; and there might be something to be lost. At any rate the safe side was the wise side with that bill not even properly drawn up. So Tom and his solicitor parted coldly for the last time; and Tom tore up that slip of writing which had been handed to him at Marylebone, but relented next moment, and treasured the torn pieces till the end.
And now at last his gallant spirit surrendered itself to the apathy of sheer despair; and the physical collapse which supervened was almost as complete as that of the brave but broken heart. A sudden outbreak of morbid appearances brought the surgeon in hot haste to clean the foul tongue, to regulate the irregular pulse, moisten the parched skin, and in a word, to keep his man well enough to die on the following Tuesday. The good Macmurdo would as lief have given him a draught of deadly poison, but such humanity would have sent himself to the gallows instead. So the surgeon did his best for the poor doomed body; and the chaplain did his best for an immortal soul still filled with bitter rebellion and rage; but this physician was less successful, though not less kind—praying in his chamber for the poor impenitent, but yet doing what in him lay to further such efforts as were still being made for a reprieve. Even on the last Sunday, when the stern divine furnished that incredible barbarism, the condemned sermon, the humane gentleman was upon the other tack, and in almost hourly communication with Daintree himself.
Tom could not guess at that. The last to enter, the first to leave the crowded chapel, he did so with the sense of his indignity heavier upon him than at either Marylebone or the Old Bailey. The very chapel had been filled with sight-seers—and he the sight! He had recognised the noble earl who had come to spy upon him before the trial, and with him ladies. And to cap all, the Ordinary had mentioned him by name in the sermon, taking the Sixth Commandment for his text, and directly addressing Tom from the pulpit. The outrage was unforgivable. When Mr. Cotton came to his cell soon after, the convict flatly refused ever to listen to him again.
“You have insulted me before men,” he cried. “You need plead for me no more before God!”
“But consider who you are—what you were,” protested the reverend gentleman. “A clergyman’s son, your poor father—”
“Not one word of him!” said Tom. “He would never have spoken as you spoke! There, sir, do not force me to say more; you have been kind to me in your own way; but the greatest kindness now is to leave me in peace until the end.”
Next day he asked for pens and paper, and spent the entire afternoon upon one letter. Turnkeys, who came continually to see how he was bearing his last hours on earth, found him always writing, writing, writing, with the tears streaming down his face, and yet the happiest look that they had seen in it yet. The turnkeys were practical experienced men. They never doubted that what Erichsen was writing was his full confession of the crime for which he was to suffer in the morning. So one brought another to spy upon him in the act of historic composition. And still he wrote; and still he wrote.
He was done before dark, and ate his supper as he had eaten nothing for days. He seemed a happier man—that was only natural to the turnkey mind. And yet the sealed packet set in front of him on the table was not yet addressed, and when the Governor, paying him a visit in the evening, said slyly, “Is this for me?” Tom answered with quite a laugh that it was not. It was for a friend, and the last act of his unpinioned hands should be to add the address.
Later in the evening a packet was brought to Tom. It was addressed “Mr. Thos. Errixon, eskwire, Condemmed sells.” Tom was for tearing it up unread, when the turnkey acting postman interposed.
“Don’t do that,” said he. “It’s from the chap who shared this cell with you, and he was very particular that you should get it safe. He says he owes you an apology or summut, and here it is, with his last parting love.”
“All right,” said Tom; “you may thank him, and wish him luck, and say I’ve nothing to forgive, but I’ll read what he says with pleasure.” And he thought he would do so towards midnight, for they had mercifully left him his candle.
To his surprise, however, there was no letter at all, but one huge printed sheet, whence (when it was unfolded and spread out upon the table) his own name in a gigantic headline seemed to leap up and lash Erichsen across the face. The headlines ran—
LIFE, TRIAL AND AWFUL
EXECUTION
OF THOMAS ERICHSEN,
THE HAMPSTEAD MURDERER.
Below, there was a grotesque block, in which a colossal figure, white-capped and ready noosed, surmounted a miniature Felon’s Gate, with a Liliputian crowd in the foreground. Left and right of the picture figured a set of verses; the letterpress beneath was prose.
The former began—
VERSES
My deeds to you I now will mention,
Overcome with grief and shame;
Pray one moment give attention—
Thomas Erichsen is my name.
Reared and trained by reverend parents,
Who checked me if I done amiss;
Educated in their religion,
They little thought I’d come to this.
There were eight such stanzas, with a chorus to match, but Tom got no further than the above. He had seen such “broadsides” before. So they were ready printed for next morning’s use! He cast his eye below and read the headings: “The Murder and the Trial,” “The Verdict,” “The Judge’s Address,” “The Execution”—
The Execution! He had not realised the meaning of the word in the first staring headlines. Now he did. So they wrote of the execution before it was accomplished, did they? What if it never were accomplished? Yet here was a circumstantial account ready-made in advance. “Long before daylight this morning crowds assembled in front of the gaol at Newgate, to witness the awful yet just extreamities of the law carried out on the poor unfortunate young man—” and so forth. Printing, spelling and facts were on a par. “His behaviour in prison has been that of a gentleman and Christian, and when the shirriff arrived at six o’clock this morning, they found him in earnest prayer, with the rev chaplain, and as the time drew nearer, he was observed to weep a little—”
“Was he, by God!” cried Tom, through his teeth. He crushed the paper into a ball and tossed it across the cell; then looked well at door and window before putting out his candle and sitting down on his bed to think.
A full May moon shot a vivid beam through the sunken eye of the cell, and it struck the wall in a chequered square that hung like a picture low down over Tom’s pallet. He jumped into bed and lay very still as steps approached and a head was thrust in to see how he was passing the time. He had to thank his excellent behaviour ever since his first night in Newgate for so much privacy on this his last. He meant to take advantage of it now, for a cold, hard rage possessed him, with a fixed determination to cheat the gallows yet. As good as executed, was he? So accounts of the execution were in type already before the event? He could falsify these, at least; and, so far from cursing the creature that had put them in his way, Tom was grateful to him for an idea which would never have occurred to him otherwise. Prostration had left him indifferent, if not resigned, and he had Creasey to thank for the heating of every drop of blood and for the stiffening of every nerve and muscle in his body. And yet he was cool; by coolness only could he achieve his end; even so, the way was not obvious. Suicide? That was his first idea. He had the means—his braces—his prison bars. But no! If hang he must, better to step out and die as a man than as a rat in its hole. Escape? It was not possible; if only it were!
He sprang up, thrust his head and shoulders in the window-socket, and hung there, face to face with the moon. The window was open, for the night was warm. What was it that he heard? The lowing and bleating of frightened animals—at Smithfield, doubtless—being penned for the killing like himself! But that was not all. There was something more insistent, something nearer at hand and unceasing; nay, increasing too. The pulse of a multitude—the murmur of a mob. A street song at dead of night—to while away the hours—his last hours on earth. Street cries! “Life and trial of Thomas Erichsen,” as like as not; but they should not add “execution.” Not yet at all events. He would do something to die for first!
A tug at the bars—they yielded nothing. Another, with all his might, and his knees drawn up against the sill; not an inch, not the sixteenth part of one! The bars were hopeless. He sprang back into the cell, and stood there with the full moon laughing in his white face and blazing eyes. Very well! He would brain the next turnkey who came near him, and so at least deserve his death, even if he could not slip into the dead man’s clothes and thus away. So the hot fit had followed the cool; so madness trod upon the heels of rational thought.
The murmur of the crowd had done it; it had left him a wounded lion, and his maddened eyes were now roving round the cell in search of that with which to shed blood for blood. They lit upon the metal wash-stand fixed (like the iron candlestick) to the wall. In an instant the washstand was torn out by the roots, and poised over the cropped yellow head, while the loose tin things rang like cymbals on the floor. The clatter was slow to cease. It was followed inevitably by hurried footsteps in the corridor. So much the better. The time was come.
Tom raised the washstand on high in both hands, and himself on tip-toes to give the greater force to his blow as the door was flung hurriedly open; he was bringing it down upon grey hairs, when he saw their colour, and swerving, swung the apparatus with a crash against the wall.
“Lucky for you it was you!” he cried as the chaplain threw up his hands. “Unlucky for me: I’d have killed any other man in the place. Now you see what they’ve made of me! Better send them to tie me up; it’s no good your wasting your breath.”
The Ordinary wrung his hands, and gazed in the frenzied face with unspeakable anguish in his own; while louder and louder through the cell window came the clamour of the growing mob.
“Have you so utterly forgotten your God?” began the poor man, with the tears in his eyes. “He has never forgotten you!”
“He has,” said Tom, doggedly, “or He wouldn’t let me suffer for another man’s crime.”
“He has not!” shouted the chaplain, flourishing a paper from his pocket. “He has moved the hearts of those in authority over us! On your knees, sir, and give Him thanks; for your life has been spared at the eleventh hour!”